The Welcome Page

Previous releases of Lotus Notes used a concept called the workspace.
This workspace was a large area containing square button icons that represented
databases. Although the workspace is still available, mainly to ease transition
and training, Notes 6 has improved the Web browser-type user interface. Release
6 has merged the concepts of the traditional Notes workspace and bookmarks, now
allowing any folder of bookmarks to be opened in a grid.

The workspace user interface will not be discussed much here because users
upgrading from earlier releases are already familiar with it, and users new to
Notes with Release 6 don't really need to learn it. However, understanding
how to open bookmarks in a grid brings together the best of the workspace and
bookmarks.

In Figure 3.1, you see the Basics Welcome Page, also sometimes called a
headline page.

The Basics Welcome Page

On the left side of the screen you see the four most common Notes
applications: mail, calendar, address book, and To Do list. An overview of each
of these topics is presented within this chapter, but each is covered in detail
later in the book. Mail is covered in Chapter 4, "Getting Started with
Electronic Mail." The calendar and the To Do list are covered in Chapter 7,
"Getting Organized with the Calendaring and Scheduling Features." The
address book is discussed in Chapter 6, "Getting Started with Contact
Management."

On the right side of the screen you see a set of icons called Quick Notes.
You can use Quick Notes, a window within the Basics Welcome Page, to create and
send an email message, add a contact to your list of contacts, make a journal
entry, or schedule reminders. To display the Quick Notes frame, simply click the
arrow on the right-hand side of the Notes window.

Customizing the Welcome Page

In the first two chapters, you saw several different welcome pages, but you
haven't been shown how to modify or create your own. As with previous
releases, you can choose a style from the built-in welcome styles, or you can
create your own page style.

To modify your welcome page style, click the black arrow located underneath
the toolbar named Click Here for Welcome Page Options (see Figure 3.2). A frame
appears enabling you to configure the welcome page. If you choose Headlines with
Lycos, for example, you will see a three-pane welcome page containing your mail,
your calendar, and a Lycos news page.

Figure 3.2 You can show your mail, your calendar, and news on your welcome
page.

Figure 3.2 demonstrates the Headlines with My Lycos welcome page containing
useful information. However, what if you want different information? No problem.
Follow the steps here to customize your welcome page:

Click the black arrow next to the words Click Here for Welcome Page
Options.

Click the Create a New Welcome Page button to display the New Page
Wizard.

Give your welcome page a name and click Next.

You'll be asked whether you want a welcome page with resizable
regions using frames or a personal page using customizable rich text. Frames use
only one content type per frame and provide the capability for you to resize the
content within the Notes environment. In contrast, the personal page enables you
to choose from a variety of layouts that can include personal pictures, Web
links, and a background graphic. For the following steps, you'll use
frames; verify that the I Want Frames radio button is selected and click
Next.

The next step in the wizard asks you to pick and choose the content to
include within your welcome page (see Figure 3.3). Content can include your
inbox, your calendar, your To Do list, a Web page, content from other Notes
databases, and local files. Some content areas such as Notes databases, files
from the local workstation, and Web pages can include multiple frames of each
content type. Additionally, you can choose to include a preview pane. The
preview pane lets you display a selected document from any of the Notes
database-driven content types, including your inbox, calendar, and task
list.

Figure 3.3 You can personalize the welcome page by selecting the content
areas that are of interest to you.

Choose the desired content areas and click Next.

After you select the content types, you'll be asked to select the
desired frame layout. Depending on the number of content types that you
selected, the frame layout might vary, but the dialog box that you see should be
similar to Figure 3.4. If you find that the frame layout is too crowded, click
Back and reduce the number of content types. After you choose your layout, click
Next.

Each frame in the dialog box enables you to choose from your
preselected content types. Content types can include content from internal Notes
databases, extranet content provided by your organization's business
partners, or your favorite Web site (see Figure 3.5).

Figure 3.5 You can choose and set properties for each frame of your
welcome page.

After you have finalized each frame's properties and
location, click Next.

Your welcome page is almost complete. The final choice is to decide
whether to include action buttons or the launch pad (see Figure 3.6). Action
buttons are graphical shortcuts that appear at the top of each view within
the inbox, calendar, and To Do list. The launch pad, a new feature of
Release 6, provides an easy-to-use interface to launch a variety of commonly
used Notes shortcuts.

Figure 3.6 The final step in customizing your welcome page is to choose to
display the new launchpad or action bar buttons.

Click Next to complete the wizard to finish your customized
welcome page. Figure 3.7 demonstrates the result of customizing content from the
both the Web and Notes.

Figure 3.7 A welcome page can contain various types of content with an
optional launch pad.

After you create a custom welcome page, it appears in the list of welcome
pages. You can have several different welcome pages; if you are working on
several different projects, you can conveniently switch back and forth among the
various different welcome pages you set up.